Privacy and Cookie Policy

Updated: 28 November 2013

This notice explains how we will process your personal information

Why we collect your data?

By collecting your data, it allows us to understand what your needs and wants are, provide personalised content and match the most relevant adverts and services for you. It also allows us to provide targeted offers and services you may be interested to hear about.

Who we are?

News Corp UK & Ireland Ltd is the holding company for several companies. Each individual company will decide on how to process personal information, but always in line with this policy. A company that decides on what and how to process personal information is called a Data Controller.

When you provide personal information to The Sun the data controller is News Group Newspapers Limited.

When you provide personal information to The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sunday Times Travel Magazine the data controller is Times Newspapers Limited.

When you provide personal information to The Times Literary Supplement the data controller is The Times Literary Supplement Limited.

When you provide personal information to The Sunday Times Driving.co.uk the data controller is Sunday Times Driving Limited.

When you provide personal information to mynipp.co.uk the data controller is News International Pension Trustees Limited.

News Group Newspapers Limited, Times Newspapers Limited, The Times Literary Supplement Limited, Milkround Online Limited, Sunday Times Driving Limited and News International Pension Trustees Limited are part of the News Corp UK & Ireland Limited group of companies whose registered address is 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF.

If in the event that we sell our business, customer information may be one of the transferred business assets. If this happens, your information will still be subject to this policy.

Cookies and IP Addresses

When you visit one of our websites, we may send you a cookie. A cookie is a small file which is placed on your computer or device.

1. Essential Cookies
These cookies are essential for the running of our websites. Without the use of these cookies parts of our websites would not function. For example, The Times paywall uses cookies to help us identify which of our readers have a subscription in order to access paid for content held on the website.

2. Analytical Performance Cookies
We use these types of cookies to monitor our websites performance and how their users may use it. These cookies provide us with information that helps us provide better products to their users and also to identify any areas that may need maintenance. For example, we use performance cookies on The Sun's website to provide the most popular news articles further up the page of the website.

3. Functional Cookies
Functional cookies are used to remember your preferences on our websites. This can be anything from remembering your city in a weather forecast or saving your username.

4. Behavioural Advertising Cookies/Third Party Cookies
We, and our advertisers/sponsors, may use cookies to provide tailored advertising to you which we believe are relevant to you. Online behavioural advertising is a way of providing advertisements on the websites you visit and making them more relevant to your interests. This is done by grouping together shared interests based upon previous web browsing activity. Advertising is then displayed to you when you visit a website which matches these interests.

Behavioural advertising is based upon your web browsing activity over a period of time - so it's different to advertising you may see when you're looking for something online using a search engine (e.g. Google) or on the website you may be visiting at a particular time.
As an example, you may be doing research in order to buy a bicycle and read a number of different articles on a number of different websites. If a bicycle manufacturer was part of an advertising network, they may think that you are interested in buying a bicycle and serve you with one of their adverts for one of their bicycles. It is possible that from reading these articles elsewhere, you would see this advert on one of our or someone else's websites.
We cannot control nor do we have access to any cookies placed on your computer by third party advertisers and sponsors. We may also track IP addresses.

How to control the use of cookies

You are not obliged to accept cookies and may modify your browser so that it will not accept cookies. The browser you use to surf the web not only allows you to see the cookies that you have got but also allows you to control their use. You can control them by allowing them, deleting them individually or deleting all of them. You can also set your browser to not accept cookies altogether. If this option is selected, you should be aware that many websites will not function properly or at all. It may be possible to set your browser to not accept cookies and ask for your consent before each cookie is set on your device. This gives you control over what is set on your device, however has the drawback of slowing down your browsing experience.

There are different levels of control too. You are able to prevent just third party cookies being deployed, effectively opting out of behavioural advertising, and some even allow you to block specific companies you do not wish to deploy a cookie, instead of selecting all companies.

In order to manage your cookies, please follow the instructions provided by your browser supplier for your PC or device.

How can I prevent Online Behavioural Advertising?

Further to using your browser to controlling the use of cookies, there are also other ways that you can opt out of Online Behavioural Advertising.

The "Your Online Choices" page provided by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), provides an easy way to opt out of behavioural advertising from each (or all) of the networks represented by the IAB.

Our behavioural advertising partners include Google/Doubleclick and Criteo, and you can view their privacy policies and opt out on "Your Online Choices".

Flash Cookies

When you use one of our websites that uses Macromedia Flash Player, a small Flash Cookie may be used. The purpose of using these cookies is to store your flash player preferences and enhance your browsing experience.

Flash Cookies are stored on your computer in a similar way to standard cookies, except they are stored in a different location. Due to this, it is not possible to block or manage Flash Cookies directly from your browser.

In order to manage or delete Flash Cookies, please visit Adobe's website, which provides full information, by clicking here.

Useful information about Cookies

Further information about cookies can be found on the following websites:

Web Beacons and URL tracking

As part of our email communications and website analyses, we may use web beacons and track URLs.

Web beacons are electronic files that count users who access a website or page and can also allow us to see if a cookie has been activated. Web beacons on web pages or email communications allow us to see how successful an article may be or that an email message was successfully delivered and read.

Tracked URLs will count the amount of clicks on a web page. This allows us to edit the site according to the popularity of the articles you read.

You can't decline web beacons. However by preventing cookies being used on your computer, you can prevent web beacons from tracking your activity. For information about managing your cookie options, please click here.

Please be aware that if you disable cookies, many services on our websites will not be available to you, particularly those that contain personalised content as outlined in the section Personalised content.

Device Identifiers

Our Apps require access to the following services on your mobile device: UDID, MAC address, or other applicable device identifier. We send this information to our servers for the purpose of validating free trials. We do not share this information with any 3rd parties.

Personalised content

The content on our websites and in our email communications may be adjusted depending on what we know about the content, products and services that you like. This means we can highlight content and articles that we believe will be of interest to you.
Advertising content may be adjusted depending on personal information. In some instances, this targeted advertising may be created by third parties and the information will be collected and held by these third parties outside the control of News.

We provide personalisation by using cookies, IP addresses, web beacons and URL tracking. A full explanation of how this works and how you can prevent the use of such activities, please see our Cookies, and IP Address section.

Consent

By completing our registration forms with personal information or by the continued use of our services, you are consenting to:

a) our processing your sensitive personal data such as health data for the above purposes; and
b) the transfer and processing of your information in countries outside of the European Economic Area which may not provide the same level of data protection as the UK. If we do make such a transfer or if your personal information will be processed outside of the European Economic Area, we will put a contract in place to ensure your information is protected or where applicable covered by the US "Safe Harbor Program".

Marketing consent

If you are an existing customer we will keep you informed of product developments that relate to these products and services.

When you give us your personal information, we will give you an option to receive additional ongoing marketing communications from us which may include offers and news of alternative products and services.

We do not sell our customer data to other companies to use for their marketing purposes.
All of our marketing communications will have a method to unsubscribe. You may also exercise your right to opt out of the use of your information for marketing purposes at any time by contacting us by one of the methods explained at the end of this notice.

Please note: Many products or services include personalised communications as part of their package; users will be given the opportunity to control the receipt wherever possible. In the event that the product or service consists entirely of communication (e.g editorial bulletins) this may take the form of unsubscribing from the specific communication.

If you purchase or redeem an offer with us, we may need to disclose your personal information to our partners, suppliers and subcontractors in order to process your order, fulfil deliveries, complete billing and invoicing transactions and to inform delivery and logistics planning.

We may supply personal data to trusted suppliers for analysis purposes. This will be done under agreement with us and will be in line with this policy.

We will work with other companies for promotional purposes where readers may be asked to opt in for future contact from that specific partner. With your permission we will transfer that customer data to the third party at which point it will fall under their own privacy and security controls. Members of the News Corp UK & Ireland Limited group of companies cannot be held liable for subsequent issues arising from third party usage of transferred data.

Disclosure

Your personal information will be disclosed where we are obliged or permitted by law to do so. If you post or send offensive or objectionable content anywhere on or to any of our websites or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any of our websites, we can use the information that is available to us about you to stop such behaviour. This may involve informing relevant third parties such as your employer and law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

Payment and credit checks

Customer data will be used to take payment for products and services and may be used to verify credit details related to this payment. Permission to do so is implicit in providing financial details to process payment. Direct Debit information may be retained for ease of renewal of services.

If you apply for credit then to help us to make credit decisions about you, to prevent fraud, to check your identity and to prevent money laundering, we may search the files of credit reference agencies who will record any credit searches on your file. We may also disclose details of how you conduct your account to such agencies. The information will be used by other credit grantors for making credit decisions about you and the people with whom you are financially associated for fraud prevention, money laundering prevention and occasionally for tracing debtors.

Updating or deleting your personal information profile

When you register online with a News UK group company, you can see, review and change your personal information by logging onto the website and going to "My Profile" or equivalent. Please ensure you update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Should you request that your account is closed and your personal information removed, please be assured that this will be done as soon as is reasonably possible. Personal information from closed accounts is retained in order to comply with legal obligations, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed or to resolve disputes.

Personal, transactional and behavioural information will be stored against your personal profile. If you do not use your account or interact with us, then your profile will be held for three years and a further two years in an anonymised form for analysis purposes. It will then be securely deleted.

When readers enter into a conversation with any of our titles, for example through the use of polls, comments, text messages, email, phone, radio or letters we reserve the right to display this content indefinitely in any relevant context subject to our editorial judgement. This will be anonymised in the case of testimonials or customer service conversations.

Please remember that any information about yourself or your family that you submit in social media including chat rooms, blogs and forums will be viewed by other people. As such, this personal data may be viewed, collected and used by third parties over whom we have no control. We are not responsible for either the information you submit/post or otherwise make available in such public areas or any use that may be made of such information by any third party.

When you give us information about another person, you confirm that they have appointed you to act for them, to consent to the processing of their personal data, including sensitive personal data and to the transfer of their information abroad and to receive on their behalf any data protection notices.

When you request to have your profile removed from further marketing offers from us, you will be added to a suppression list to ensure your request is complied with.

Information Requests

You have a right to ask for a copy of your personal information from any News Corp UK & Ireland Limited group company which may hold about you (for which we charge a small processing fee) and to ask us to correct any inaccuracies in your personal information (which is free). To make sure we follow your instructions correctly and to improve our service to you through training of our staff, we may monitor or record telephone calls.

Notification of changes

From time to time, we may make changes to the Privacy Policy. This may be in relation to changes in the law, best practice, changes in our services or treatment of your personal information. We will always display clearly when the privacy policy was last amended on the website.